A victory for Lando Norris and McLaren in the Hungarian Grand Prix means that only one of the big four Formula 1 teams — Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, and Red Bull — has failed to win a race in the first half of the 2026 season. What makes that fact even more painful for Red Bull Racing and new power unit source Ford is that they have never really come close to winning a race on merit and pure performance.
And not winning, or at least not being a contender, is an unfamiliar situation for Max Verstappen. He’s regularly voiced strong opinions about the handling of the difficult RB22, and he didn’t hold back when he was twice thrown off the road by the trick ‘macarena’ rear wing not operating effectively.
There are two main reasons for the under-performance. Firstly, the team put a lot of resources into last year’s title campaign, to the detriment of preparations for 2026 — whereas Mercedes and Ferrari could switch focus earlier. Secondly, the move to the in-house Ford power unit was a bold step, one that soaked up a lot of resources. It has perhaps worked out better than anyone anticipated in terms of performance, but there have been some reliability issues, and getting off the starting line wasn’t easy.
By way of comparison, last year didn’t start particularly well for Verstappen or his team, but after round 11 he was still in third place with 155 points. At the same stage this season, he’s in sixth, with 109 points. The big difference is that, despite a tricky car in 2025, he had won two races by now. This time around, Verstappen has had to settle a best result of second place, achieved first in Austria and again — to the surprise even of himself — in Hungary.
That penultimate spot on the podium was unexpected because the car had been difficult all weekend, and he spun on his last run in qualifying as he tried to tame it. Having been only sixth-fastest, he was quick to complain about how just how hard it was.
“The weekend in general has been difficult,” he said when asked about his troubles by Road & Track before the race. “But when, instead of the tires degrading, your car is degrading, then you have a big problem. So that’s what’s happening. The car just kept getting worse and worse, lap after lap. So the more laps I did, it was just more and more difficult to put a lap together. And for tomorrow as well, we need to fix that, because the car is not drivable like this, as you could see in the final corner. You just turn in — the car is, like, non-existent on the rear. So it’s really crazy.”
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That didn’t bode well for the race, but in typical Verstappen fashion, the Dutchman made the best of what he had. Penalties for others moved him up from P6 to P4 on the grid, then he gained another spot at the start, with only the two McLarens still ahead. Lewis Hamilton jumped him with an earlier pit stop, but Verstappen responded with a brilliant pass, sailing past both Liam Lawson and the Ferrari driver in one move. Later, the team made a great call when it put him on soft tires for the stint to the flag. He found himself in the runner-up spot, helped by a late retirement for Oscar Piastri. He beat Ferrari and Mercedes fair and square.
“I still don’t really understand how we are second,” Verstappen smiled afterwards. “But I think as a team, we performed strongly. I see it as a bit of an over-performance compared to what we expected — so I guess that’s, of course, a good thingm considering how everything felt.”
Team boss Laurent Mekies agreed that the result was better than anyone in the camp had predicted. “We felt Lando and the two Ferraris would be out of touch,” said the Frenchman. “And we felt we could race Mercedes, and probably Oscar. As it turned out, we could race both Ferraris, and Lando was out of reach. So very well done to the pit wall and to the whole team back home — the tire group, the strategy group. I think as a whole race execution has been very, very strong here. We have suffered at the beginning of the year with our starts; we are now managing to produce decent starts, strong pit stops, [and] very strong strategy, as always. So certainly very happy with the way the team has been operating in these last few races, and certainly, back to the standard it’s known for.”
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Good race execution and being there to take advantage when others don’t optimize their weekends is one thing, and as Mekies suggests, is a reflection of the team’s status as a regular championship contender. However, Verstappen and teammate Isaac Hadjar need a faster and more consistent car, one with a balance that inspires confidence.
“I think we never managed to give Max and Isaac a car they could they could push with,” Mekies said of Hungary after the race. “That was never the case this weekend. Certainly worse on Friday and Saturday, compared to today — but still, today, I have to say that it probably was still not giving a very good feeling to the drivers.”
However, Mekies could still see a half-full glass given Verstappen’s pace on Sunday.
“I think it’s fair to say that only Lando was clearly faster than Max today,” he said. “And I think everyone else, he could have matched or beaten. I guess it’s positive, because it means we have margin to improve with the current package, and we will try to see why we are so much on the edge of car balance — car performing, car not performing. It’s been hard work for, certainly, the drivers, but also the team in these last few races to keep the car in its window.”
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“I think it’s about consistency of the delivery of the performance, and it’s been a topic for us this season, and it’s probably where some of the potential improvement is in the second part of the year,” he added.
Progress is being made, and the gap to the pacesetters has shrunk since the start of the season. However, there is still a long way to go if Verstappen is going to repeat the second-half charge to the front he made in 2025.
“Don’t count on me to say that we are satisfied, because we are not,” said Mekies. “Because we will not be satisfied until we go back to having a race car that has the pace to win on merit.”